Enactive Filmmaking: Rethinking Ethnographic Cinema in the First Person

In this article I revisit the concept of ethnographic filmmaking in the first person, reviewing at first the different interpretations of the first person in documentary filmmaking and then proposing an approach that stresses interaction and intersubjectivity. I term this approach enactive filmmaking, drawing inspiration from the films of Jean Rouch and the thought of cognitive scientist Francisco Varela. I discuss enactive filmmaking's interconnected aspects of sensory evocation, collaborative methods and performativity as applied to the making of my documentary Kalanda - The Knowledge of the Bush, arguing for films in the first person in which the filmmaker provokes revelatory performances and is deeply changed by the experience of filming.